Stolen Tyrannosaurus skeleton returned to Mongolia

The nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton was looted from the Gobi desert in Mongolia.

AFP/Office of Manhattan US Attorney

The remains of a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton stolen from the Gobi desert and sold at auction in New York have been returned to Mongolia.

The nearly complete skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus bataar, a cousin of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, had been put up for sale and went for $US1.05 million last year before United States authorities intervened at Mongolia's request.

Top New York federal prosecutor Preet Bharara said at a handing-over ceremony that the US had stopped a "criminal scheme and now, one year later, we are very pleased to have played a pivotal role in returning Mongolia's million-dollar baby".

"We never had a dinosaurs' museum before, so we'll set up for the first time a new museum called Central Dinosaur Museum of Mongolia. T bataar is going to be the first item, the first exhibit of the museum," Mongolian minister of culture, sport and tourism Oyungerel Tsedevdamba said.

She said it was the first cultural repatriation ever to Mongolia.

Collector Eric Prokopi, described as a "one-man black market in prehistoric fossils", pleaded guilty last December to smuggling the bones.

He will be sentenced on August 30 and faces up to 17 years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine.

Prokopi, who has denied trafficking, spent a year restoring and remounting what had been a loose collection of bones to recreate the skeleton, according to Heritage Auctions, which had attempted to sell the dinosaur on his behalf.

The Florida dealer was also accused of illegally importing from Mongolia a second, nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton, two Saurolophus skeletons and two Oviraptor skeletons.

He was also accused of smuggling a Microraptor skeleton from China.

US customs director John Morton said the case had resulted in something "extraordinary".

"This dinosaur skeleton belongs in Mongolia, not on the black market," he said.